"Tail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Almost directly someone gave the half-open door a little push and came quickly into the room; it was Mother in her pink dressing-gown which Susan always thought so beautiful, and her fair hair all plaited up in one long tail for the night. She came up to the bed, shading the flame of the candle with ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... the East, they suppose the Phoenix to have fifty orifices in his bill, which are continued to his tail; and that, after living one thousand years, he builds himself a funeral pile, sings a melodious air of different harmonies through his fifty organ pipes, flaps his wings with a velocity which sets fire to the wood ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... growling lion his tail in for a spring: Then spake the bull unto him, "Wilt have your reckoning? Hei! then nearer to us get, That this green meadow may ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the set of brilliant young folks of whom Magda Wielitzska, the well-known dancer, was the acknowledged leader, it conveyed a very slightly veiled hint that he, in particular, was accounted one of her most devoted satellites. The sting of the paragraph lay in its tail: ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... was drowned in usquebaugh, The Scot was drowned in ale, The Welshman he near swallowed a mouse But he pulled it out by the tail. ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... nudities. And such is the Solomon who fantastically complains that I have disdained to be enlightened by his "modest suggestions." Au reste the article is not bad simply because it borrows—again Americanice—all its matter from my book. At the tail-end, however comes the normal sting: I am guilty of not explaining "Wuzu" (lesser ablution), "Ghusl" (greater ablution), and "Zakat" (legal alms which constitute a poor-rate), proving that the writer never read vol. iii. He confidently suggests replacing "Cafilah," "by the better known word Caravan," ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... gate. At the side of the road stood a travel-stained middle-class automobile, with a miscellany of dusty luggage, rugs and luncheon things therein—a family automobile with father no doubt at the wheel. Sir Richmond left his own trim coupe at its tail. ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... explained in No. IV. 4. of this section. Nor is it possible, that such deformities could be produced by the growth of two embryons, or living filaments; which should afterwards adhere together; as the head and tail part of different polypi are said to do (Blumenbach on Generation, Cadel, London); since in that case one embryon, or living filament, must have begun to form one part first, and the other another part first. But such monstrous conformations become less difficult to comprehend, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... side—perhaps taking his arm—it was a pursuer to shun. It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend too, for, while it was making the whole night behind him dreadful, he darted out into the roadway to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its coming hopping out of them like a dropsical boy's-Kite without tail and wings. It hid in doorways too, rubbing its horrible shoulders against doors, and drawing them up to its ears, as if it were laughing. It got into shadows on the road, and lay cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... guard, but merely, as he said, drawing up and adjusting his plaid with an air of dignity, that he might appear decently at Tully-Veolan, and as Vich Ian Vohr's foster-brother ought to do. 'Ah!' said he, 'if you Saxon Duinhe-wassel (English gentlemen) saw but the Chief with his tail on!' ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... sigh and wiped her eye, And over the hillocks she raced; And tried what she could, as a shepherdess should, That each tail should ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)
... his stubby tail excitedly. He was a proud creature, a proof of what could be done with a bad job, and he had all the snobbishness that is acquired, not bred in the bone. He slept on the foot of Patricia's bed and forgot back alleys. He selected tidbits with the air of one ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... rather eccentric-looking person who spoke; somewhat ursine in aspect; sporting a shaggy spencer of the cloth called bear's-skin; a high-peaked cap of raccoon-skin, the long bushy tail switching over behind; raw-hide leggings; grim stubble chin; and to end, a double-barreled gun in hand—a Missouri bachelor, a Hoosier gentleman, of Spartan leisure and fortune, and equally Spartan manners and sentiments; ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... obstinacy,—maligned mule! when dost thou appear to more advantage, more joyous, or more self-satisfied, than when yoked to the Maltese caleche? Who that has witnessed thee, taking the scanty meal from the hand of thine accustomed driver, with whinnying voice, waving tail, thy long ears pricked upwards, and thy head rubbing his breast, who that has seen thee thus, will deny ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... myriads, abundance of wealth and treasure, (pitiless, merciless, remorseless, and uncharitable in the highest degree), and our poor brother in need, sickness, in great extremity, and now ready to be starved for want of food, we had rather, as the fox told the ape, his tail should sweep the ground still, than cover his buttocks; rather spend it idly, consume it with dogs, hawks, hounds, unnecessary buildings, in riotous apparel, ingurgitate, or let it be lost, than he should have ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... should not have wondered that a human being, swinging round in the air, with a boat-hook in his hand, and a long rope dragging behind him, like a tail, should attract the attention of even a ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... his eyes with smoke. He seemed like to be roasted alive in this horrible underground oven. But oh, there was the hole close before him! Pouf! With a terrible roar the dragon snapped at him as Whitebird popped through the hole; but he got only a mouthful of burnt tail-feathers. Whitebird was safe, safe in the narrow passage where the dragon could not follow. Up and up and up and up he feebly fluttered into the light of the dear outside world, and then he gave a chirp of joy to find that he really had escaped. But oh, how tired and frightened ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... of man. And thus at once was opened to them the realm of sculpture. The people of the East, sometimes indeed depicting their deities in human forms, did not hesitate to change them into monsters, if the addition of another leg or another arm, a dog's head or a serpent's tail, could better express the emblem they represented. They perverted their images into allegorical deformities; and receded from the beautiful in proportion as they indulged their false conceptions of the sublime. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the innocent cause of the ignominious flight of a youth riding a donkey. While yet two hundred yards away, he reins up and remains transfixed for one transitory moment, as if making sure that his eyes are not deceiving him, or that he is really awake, and then hastily turns tail and bolts across the country, belaboring his long-eared charger into quite a lively gallop in his wild anxiety to escape from my awe- inspiring presence; and as he vanishes across a field, he looks back anxiously to reassure himself that I am ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... fringe of hair about his forehead in such fashion that the fringe hid his eyes, at the same time placing in his hand a sceptre of ivory, apparently of very ancient workmanship, and fashioned in the shape of a snake standing on its tail. ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... was his term as I well remarked) lifted his eyes to Heaven, let go the bridle, and abandoned himself to Providence. Immediately his mule rose up upon its hind legs, and thus upright, the bishop still astride, turned round until its head was where its tail had been. The beast thereupon returned along the path until it found an opening into a good road. Everybody around the King imitated his silence, which excited the Duke to comment upon what he had just related. This generosity charmed me, and surprised ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... is in the form of a serpent's tail, and the spout is the serpent's open mouth. The lid is a nautilus shell on which stands an eagle with raised wings. On one side of the base ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... mark, miss one's footing, miss stays; slip, trip, stumble; make a slip &c., n. blunder &c. 495, make a mess of, make a botch of; bitch it|, miscarry, abort, go up like a rocket and come down like the stick, come down in flames, get shot down, reckon without one's host; get the wrong pig by the tail, get the wrong sow by the ear &c. (blunder, mismanage) 699. limp, halt, hobble, titubate[obs3]; fall, tumble; lose one's balance; fall to the ground, fall between two stools; flounder, falter, stick in the mud, run aground, split ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... like; though this, neither, did not hang together, for then she would not have fixed upon Amy for her mother. But some time after, when Amy had almost persuaded her out of it, and that the girl began to be so confounded in her discourses of it, that she made neither head nor tail, at last the passionate creature flew out in a kind of rage, and said to Amy, that if she was not her mother, Madam Roxana was her mother then, for one of them, she was sure, was her mother; and then all this that Amy had done for her was by Madam Roxana's order. "And I am sure," says she, "it was ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... are high, the laird's purse dry, Come out in the morning early; McNabs are keen, the Guards are green, The blackcock's tail is curly. ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a kite, and he was holding it high to keep it free of the ground. The tail had got caught in the string and there was a ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... begot by Loke with the giantess Angerbode. It was to be one of the occasioners of the world's destruction, and was on that account cast by Odin into the deep sea, where it grew to such a degree that it lay round the whole earth, and bit its own tail. ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... Dennis is one of the most pleasant parts of the county in which it is situated. It is fertile, well wooded, well watered, and of an excellent air. For many generations the manor had been holden in tail-male by a worshipful family, who have always taken precedence of their neighbours at the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... all other interests or feelings in the gratification of their blind rancor characterized all their actions. When York purchased the land below Scott's new claim, and obliged the latter, at a great expense, to make a long detour to carry a "tail-race" around it, Scott retaliated by building a dam that overflowed York's claim on the river. It was Scott, who, in conjunction with Colonel Starbottle, first organized that active opposition to the Chinamen, which resulted in the driving off of York's Mongolian ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... respectfully, they bade him enter; and the Lord Chamberlain escorted him before the King himself, who sat on a great red-velvet throne in the Hall. In came the fellow, dragging after him by the tail the limp body of ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... imagination, might be regarded as affectionate, but this was only from a sense of religious duty. At such times I was prone to distrust him even more than at others. He believed in a personal devil with horns, a tail, and, I suspect, red tights; and up to the age of ten I shared implicitly in this belief. The day began and ended with family prayers of a ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... Thomas Evershed, divisional engineer of the New York State Canals. Like the other, it consists in tapping the river above the Falls, and using the pressure of the water to drive the number of turbines, then restoring the water to the river below the Falls; but instead of a surface canal, the tail-race is a hydraulic tunnel or underground conduit. To this end some fifteen hundred acres of spare land, having a frontage just above the upper rapids, was quietly secured at the low price of three hundred ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... it was that Ram Nath proved his mettle. Hardened himself, he showed no mercy to his passenger, and never once drew rein, though the tonga danced from rock to ridge and ridge to rut and back again, like a tin can on the tail of an astonished dog. As for Amber, he wedged his feet and held on with both hands, grimly, groaning in spirit when he did not in the flesh, foreseeing as he did nine hours more of this heroic torture punctuated only by brief respites at ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... Burleigh, and Evelyn and Caroline finished their survey of the house,—tapestry, and armour, pictures and all. This led to a visit to the Arabian horses. Caroline observed that she was very fond of riding, and went into ecstasies with one of the animals,—the one, of course, with the longest tail. The next day the horse was in the stables at the rectory, and a gallant epistle apologized ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Miles Coverdale's," said the fiendish fiddler, with a whisk of his tail and a toss of his horns. "My music has brought him hither. He is always ready to ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... till she was clean exhausted. She then threw the street-door half open and, as I made for it to save my life, attempted violently to close it, so as to squeeze my soul out of my body; but I saw her design and baffled it, leaving behind me, however, the tip of my tail; and piteously yelping hereat I escaped further basting and thought myself lucky to get away from her without broken bones. When I stood in the street still whining and ailing, the dogs of the quarter seeing a stranger, at once came rushing at me barking and biting;[FN264] and I ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... give the world," he exclaimed with great interest, "for a hook and line, a fish-spear, or any piscatorial instrument of death! Look, Ellen, you can see the waving of his tail from beneath the bank!" ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... easy to keep the board from drifting out, but along the shallows it was quiet water and it did not go so very far, and before long, the little dog was able to reach it, crawling upon it and shivering while he wagged his tail feebly as Edna continued to cheer him. It was harder work now that the board was heavier by reason of the added weight, and once or twice Edna was afraid that after all her efforts would be in vain. It would be dreadful to abandon ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... sir," Lund replied. "But a clergyman near the station said you had gone another way, so I turned back. And when I got here I couldn't make top nor tail of the story. Blest if I wasn't a bit nervous that it might have been some plant to rob you. And I was going to drive slowly along to the station again when you ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... out with much skill. The drives are bordered with ornamental trees from all lands. The most beautiful of all the palms is the Traveler's tree from Madagascar. It is a palm the fronds of which grow up like a regular fan. At a little distance it looks like a peacock's tail spread to the full extent. It is so light, graceful and feathery that it satisfies the eye as no other palm does. Of other palms there are legion, from the Mountain Cabbage palm of the West Indies to endless varieties from ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... Antoine, armed with a club and swinging a lantern, majestically posed at the nearer entrance to the garden. With a swallow-tail coat over his night-shirt and his nightcap tipped over one ear, he was an enthralling figure. As he strode toward me his slippers flapped weirdly upon the brick walk. "There's somebody in the garden, sir," he ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... only unknown to her, it was shut away from her by the lock of a key that opened on no estimable worldly advantage in exchange, but opened on a dreary, clouded round, such as she had used to fancy it must be to the beautiful creamy circus-horse of the tossing mane and flowing tail and superb step. She was admired; she was just as much doomed to a round of paces, denied the glorious fling afield, her nature's food. Hitherto she would have been shamefaced as a boy in forming the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ran the story—infested the mountains of Labrador. Two islands, north of Newfoundland, were given over to the fiends from whom they derived their name, the Isles of Demons. An old map pictures their occupants at length,—devils rampant, with wings, horns, and tail. The passing voyager heard the din of their infernal orgies, and woe to the sailor or the fisherman who ventured alone into the haunted woods. "True it is," writes the old cosmographer Thevet, "and I myself have heard it, not from one, but from a great ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... a hog is an animal, I am willing to allow the relationship; for in the course of my experience, which is not small, I have met with men that you might have mistaken for hogs, in everything but the bristles, the snout, and the tail. I'll never deny what I've seen with my own eyes, though I suffer for it; and therefore I admit that, hogs being animals, it is more than likely that some ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and Rufus Cosgrave came racketing back up the steep and creaking stairs. It was like the whirlwind entry of some boisterous comet dragging at its rear a bewildered, happy tail. They were as exultant as though their paper bags contained priceless loot rescued ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... next attacked by the enemy. Some 300 Boers advancing from Helpmakaar were met by Umvoti Mounted Rifles under Major Leuchars and some Natal Police under Sub-Inspector Maxwell. Two good hours of fighting ensued, after which the Boers turned tail and made off. Here we must note that every one spoke highly of the Natal Mounted Police. The members of the force, mostly gentlemen, were fine horsemen and crack shots. Being Colonial bred, they were ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... paper of an extra size and ornamented with long streamers of red and green ribbons, ran with it to the clerk's desk, and that officer proceeded to read it at length, including a long list of signatures which comprised Patrick O'Shea, Annie Rooney, Spotted Tail, etc. This petition was followed by two others of similar character, bearing Indian names of such significance as the wit of the opposition could invent. After this dignified prelude the House discussed the measure at length, and defeated it by a vote of 38 ayes, 39 noes. A reconsideration was moved ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... - Dom Gianni at the instance of his gossip Pietro uses an enchantment to transform Pietro's wife into a mare; but, when he comes to attach the tail, Gossip Pietro, by saying that he will have none of the tail, makes the ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... straightway into a great doubt, and smoked for half an hour without saying a word; at length, laying his finger beside his nose, and shutting his eyes for a moment, with the air of a man who had just caught a subtle idea by the tail, he slowly took his pipe from his mouth, puffed forth a column of tobacco smoke, and with marvelous gravity and solemnity pronounced, that, having carefully counted over the leaves and weighed the books, it was found that one was just as thick and heavy as the other; therefore, it was ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... last, about ten o'clock in the morning, a thin, spare-looking man, dressed in a black cashmeret suit, swallow-tail coat, loose-cut pants, a straight-breasted vest, with a very extravagant shirt-collar rolling over upon his coat, with a black ribbon tied at the throat, stood at the east corner of Broad and Meeting ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... at once upon my course. I got into the wagon, calculating that the water would probably not come to my head while standing up, should the boat go down. If it should, then I determined to take my horse by the tail and let him tow me ashore. But the owner of the team succeeded in cutting the harness, thus freeing the horse and allowing the boat to right itself so that it ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... according to these instructions, and found himself, to his intense amazement and the delight of the bystanders, sitting with his face to the mule's tail. ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... the great want of lumber, contracted in September last with a Mr. Marshall to build a saw-mill at that place. It was erected in the course of the past winter and spring—a dam and race constructed; but when the water was let on the wheel, the tail race was found to be too narrow to permit the water to escape with sufficient rapidity. Mr. Marshall, to save labour, let the water directly into the race with a strong current, so as to wash it wider and deeper. He effected ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... been noticed that there are among fishes two styles of tail-fins. These are the even-lobed, or homocercal (Fig. 68), and the uneven-lobed, or heterocercal (Fig. 69). The one is characteristic of ordinary fishes (teleosts), the other of sharks and some other orders. In structure the difference ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... on the head the other day and said, "George, my boy, this is the happiest part of your life." I guess my Aunt Libby don't know much. I guess she never worked a week to make a kite, and the first time she went to fly it got the tail hitched in a tall tree, whose owner wouldn't let her climb up to disentangle it. I guess she never broke one of the runners of her sled some Saturday afternoon, when it was "prime" coasting. I guess she never had to give her biggest marbles to a great lubberly boy, because he ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... The little group stood motionless, chilled with horror. The beast came thundering on, with lips of terror parted, nostrils wide and snorting, mane and tail flying in the wild air, hoofs striking fire from the rocks. A human being—a man—was lying close to his neck, and clinging fast: the face hidden by the tossing and streaming mane: a fearful ride! the mystery surrounding him, ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... of O'Connell's "tail" in Conciliation Hall. The attempt of O'Connell to provide "poor Ned Clements" with a Government situation precipitated the ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... turbot, clean it very well, cut off the head, tail, and fins. Make a forcemeat thus; take a large eel, boil it tender, then take off the flesh; put the bones of the turbot and eel into the water the eel was boiled in, with a faggot of herbs, whole pepper, an onion, and an anchovy; ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... that the greatest quantity of fresh fish is caught which supplies not this country only, but London markets also. On the shore, beginning a little below Candy Island, or rather below Leigh Road, there lies a great shoal or sand called the Black Tail, which runs out near three leagues into the sea due east; at the end of it stands a pole or mast, set up by the Trinity House men of London, whose business is to lay buoys and set up sea marks for the direction of the sailors; this is called Shoe Beacon, from the point of land where this ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... exhibition of equine delight; the mare's lips twitched, her nose wrinkled ludicrously, she stretched her neck and tossed her head as the sweetness tickled her palate. Even the nervous switching of her tail was eloquent of pleasure. Meanwhile the owner showed his white ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... in a second. A pile of disused pea sticks lay in the fence corner. She seized one, and jumped over the fence again. Wielding her weapon as if it were a flail, she brought it down upon the ugly head and raw-boned body; and as the sow turned tail to run, belabored her through the orchard to the gap by ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... the client communities submitted to the victor of Pharsalus, the tail of the constitutional party—all who had joined it with half a heart or had even, like Marcus Cicero and his congeners, merely danced around the aristocracy like the witches around the Brocken—approached to make their peace with the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... always run against the wind. When surprised or wounded, they turn upon their assailants and attack them furiously, fighting with horns and hoofs. They show their rage by thrusting out the tongue, lashing the tail, and projecting the eyes. At such times they are fierce and formidable. The enemies of the bison are the carnivorous animals. A herd of bison has no cause to be afraid of wolves or bears, but solitary bison are often killed by these creatures. The cry of a bison ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... of their ancestors and make offerings of halwa [36] to them and place lamps and scent on their tombs. They swear by the pig and abstain from eating its flesh. The dog is considered an unclean animal and its tail, ears and tongue are especially defiling. If the hair of a dog falls on the ground they cannot pray in that place because the souls of the prophets cannot come there. To see a dog flapping its ears is a bad omen, and a person ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... peepeth oft in the glass, Shall read the Gospel at mass; The mavis with her whistle Shall read there the Epistle, But with a large and a long To keep just plain song. . . . . The peacock so proud, Because his voice is loud, And hath a glorious tail ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Now before Mr. McCloud gives you his decision I want to be allowed a word. Your idea looks good to me. At first I may say it didn't. I am candid; I say it didn't. It looked like setting a dog to catch his own tail. Mind you, I don't say it can't be done. A dog can catch his own tail; they do do it," proclaimed the stranger in a low and emphatic undertone. "But," he added, moderating his utterance, "when they succeed—who gets anything out of it but the ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... complain of its abuse, while the dialogue, mostly in Turkish, as even more obscene. Most ingenious were Kara Gyuz's little ways of driving on an Obstinate donkey and of tackling a huge Anatolian pilgrim. He mounted the Neddy's back face to tail, and inserting his left thumb like a clyster, hammered it with his right when the donkey started at speed. For the huge pilgrim he used a ladder. These shows now obsolete, used to enliven the Ezbekiyah Gardens every ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... other way, and has an auger fixed in place at the nose. It is about twenty feet long and four feet wide and made out of the strongest metal known to modern science, cryptoplutonite. It won't heat up or break off and it will start spinning around as soon as we cut loose with the tail blasts. ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... remark, for at that moment it was seen that our hero had reached the tail of the eddy which was caused by the hull of the wreck, and that one of her crew had darted from the cover of the vessel's bulwarks and taken shelter under the stump of the mainmast. His object was seen in a moment, for he unhooked a coil of rope from the belaying-pins, ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... stupid," said Syd, with a loud harsh laugh. "Said I wouldn't go to sea, and ran away, and then came sneaking back with my tail between my legs. Oh, ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... busy. I am engaged on important papers of identification. He had a white star on his forehead, and his tail was over ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... said the director, laughing, "and with your faces to the nag's head. If you tell me you look towards the tail I shall not believe you. But seriously, can you stick on a horse ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... was concerned, 'the Wilderness was Paradise enow.' Tail up, he plunged into the welter of grass, leaping and wallowing and panting with surprise and delight at a playground which surpassed his wildest dreams. For a moment we watched him amusedly. Then we pushed the door to and started to saunter towards ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... war." Much applause followed this toast, and Harris was persuaded by Bulstrode to stand up, and say a few words, for the credit of the regiment. Such a speech!—It reminded me of the horse that was advertised as a show, in London, about this time, and which was said 'to have its tail where its head ought to be.' But, Bulstrode clapped his hands, and cried 'hear,' at every other word, protesting that the regiment was honoured as much in the thanks, as in the sentiment. Harris did not seem displeased ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... Gowdy, stood before us smiling, powerful, six feet high, but so big of shoulder that he seemed a little stooped, perfectly at ease, behaving as if he had always known all of us. He wore a little black mustache which curled up at the corners of his mouth like the tail feathers of a drake. His clothes were soaked and gaumed up with mud from his tramping and crawling through the marshes; but otherwise he looked as fresh as if he had just risen from his bed, while the negro seemed ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... creature's sudden cry, Bridget came out, and saw at a glance what had been done. She took Mignon up in her arms, and looked hard at the wound; the poor dog looked at her with his glazing eyes, and tried to wag his tail and lick her hand, all covered with blood. Mr. Gisborne spoke in a kind of ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... They bought a Cat-Tail Swamp remote from Civilization and divided it into Building Lots. The Marsh was Advertised as a Manufacturing Suburb, and they had side-splitting Circulars showing the Opera House, the Drill Factory, Public Library, ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... see in your life—up to the place where his master, as he calls him, and he lives. What does that Kirkwood do but clap on a couple of long spurs and jump on to that colt's back, and off the beast goes, tail up, heels flying, standing up on end, trying all sorts of capers, and at last going it full run for a couple of miles, till he'd got about enough of it. That colt went off as ferce as a wild-cat, and come back as quiet as a cosset lamb. A man that pays his bills reg'lar, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... with you," said the author of "A Shave-tail in France." "I used to listen to you and Maury when we were young, and I used to be impressed because you were so consistently cynical, but now—well, after all, by God, which of us three has taken to the—to the intellectual life? ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Beaux Tibbs's of society, who sport a lace dickey, and nothing besides,—the poor silly jays, who trail a peacock's feather behind them, and think to simulate the gorgeous bird whose nature it is to strut on palace-terraces, and to flaunt his magnificent fan-tail in the sunshine! ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... west and blazed in the red, yellow, and pink foliage on the mountain-side. The light brought into clearer outline the brown peaks and beetling crags that rose bleak and bare above the wealth of color, beyond the dark, evergreen stretches of pines and mountain cedars. The gorgeous tail of a peacock spread and gleamed under the cherry-trees in the back yard. A sleek calf was running back and forth in a little lot, and a brindled cow was bellowing mellowly, her head thrown up as she cantered down the road, her ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... Kennett Square, a young gentleman pointed out to us the home of Benjamin West, who distinguished himself, to the disgust of broadbrims generally, as a landscape painter. In commencing his career, it is said he made use of the tail of a cat in lieu of a brush. Of course Benjamin's first attempts were on the sly, and he could not ask paterfamilias for money to buy a brush without encountering the good man's scorn. Whether, in the hour of his need and fresh enthusiasm, poor puss was led to the sacrificial altar, or whether ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... gunpowder and 2,000 Russian lives, withdrew on those remarkable terms. [In Helden-Geschichte, v. 349-365 ("3d-31st October, 1758"), a complete and minute JOURNAL of this First Siege of Colberg, which is interesting to read of, as all the Three of them are.] And did then, as tail of Fermor, what Fermor and the Russian Monster was universally doing, make off at a good pace,—having nothing to live upon farther,—and vanish from those Countries, to the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... examined, the more are its faults as a story and its interest as a self-revelation made manifest to the reader. The future historian, who spared no pains to be accurate, falls into the most extraordinary anachronisms in almost every chapter. Brutus in a bob-wig, Othello in a swallow-tail coat, could hardly be more incongruously equipped than some of his characters in the manner of thought, the phrases, the way of bearing themselves which belong to them in the tale, but never could have ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... herself. And then commences for you a condition of affairs totally new; then you receive the first intimation which nature, that good and indulgent mother, always gives to the creatures who are exposed to any danger. Nature has put a bell on the neck of the Minotaur, as on the tail of that frightful snake which is the terror of travelers. And then appear in your wife what we will call the first symptoms, and woe to him who does not know how to contend with them. Those who in reading our book will remember that they saw those symptoms ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... "We are of the tail of the nobility, good your Majesty. My father is a baronet—one of the smaller lords by knight service {2}—Sir Richard Hendon of Hendon Hall, by ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... but I had brought half a dozen spare shoes with me, and by-and-by a muleteer came along who fixed one on as neatly as any farrier could have done, and gladly accepted a reward of one halfpenny. He kept the foot steady while shoeing it by lashing the fetlock to the pony's tail. ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... reply that I do know a little about the ideals, and I think I prefer the idols. I have far more sympathy with the enthusiasm for a nice green or yellow idol, with nine arms and three heads, than with the philosophy ultimately represented by the snake devouring his tail; the awful sceptical argument in a circle by which everything begins and ends in the mind. I would far rather be a fetish worshipper and have a little fun, than be an oriental pessimist expected always to smile like an optimist. ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... north-westwardly on our voyage, and in every cloud could see a promise of the continuing trade-wind, which was shortly to end a luckless voyage. From deck to royal,—from flying-jib to ring-tail, every stitch of canvas that would draw was packed and crowded on the brig. Vessels were daily seen in numbers, but none appeared suspicious till we got far to the westward, when my glass detected a cruising schooner, jogging along under easy ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... backs and knees were slapped, heavy feet stamped. The dog stood puzzled by the tumult: he had a long, square, shaggy head, the color of ripe wheat; clear, dark eyes and powerful jaw; his body was narrow, covered with straight, wiry black hair; a short tail was half raised, tentative; and his wheat colored legs were ludicrously, inappropriately, long ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... three were approaching the dreary tail of the MacNabs' street: the girl with the stern and breathless stride of the mountaineer, the criminologist with a lounging grace (which was not without a certain leopard-like swiftness), and the priest at an energetic ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... tender sounds, the clucking of hens, snatches of the songs of birds, the rustling of maple leaves in the fitful breeze. A chipmunk ran down an elm and stood staring at her with beady, inquisitive eyes, motionless save for his quivering tail, and she put forth her hand, shyly, beseechingly, as though he held the secret of life she craved. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... days in the western quarter of the heavens, and which shot its rays into the north. Eight years afterwards, while the sun was in Capricorn, another comet appeared to follow in the Sagittary; the size was gradually increasing; the head was in the east, the tail in the west, and it remained visible above forty days. The nations, who gazed with astonishment, expected wars and calamities from their baleful influence; and these expectations were abundantly fulfilled. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... to help him!" cried Ned, for he saw that his chum had rushed to the rear of the auto, and was endeavoring to drag one of the powder boxes across the lowered tail-board. Tom was straining and tugging at it, but did not seem able to move the case. It was heavy, as Ned learned later, and was also held down by the weight of other express packages on ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... one of the carvings has a differently shaped tail from the others, the authors of the "Ancient Monuments" attempt to reconcile the discrepancy as follows: "Only one of the sculptures exhibits a flat truncated tail; the others are round. There is however a variety of the lamantin (Manitus Senigalensis, Desm.) which ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... is to say, we read aloud from some book—it may have been selections from English writers—and then Jacob, picking out the hard words or facts or phrases, required of them definition or explanation. One day there arose in these questions a sum in arithmetic, when I shot down to the tail of the class as a plummet drops to the bottom of the well. I shall never forget the proud fierce impatience which I felt, like an imprisoned chieftain who knows that he will speedily be delivered and take dire vengeance on his foes. I had not ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... music and architecture it is necessary that the two should be conceived of not as standing at opposite ends of a series represented by a straight line, but rather in juxtaposition, as in the ancient Egyptian symbol of a serpent holding its tail in its mouth, the head in this case corresponding to music, and the tail to architecture; in other words, though in one sense they are the most-widely separated of the arts, in another they ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... his teeth and his claws and his fur and his tail?" demanded Russ scornfully, and without offering to take the cylinder. He did not intend ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... 370.) Mr. Kent, in the same work, vol. iv. p. 1-22, gives a historical account of American legislation on the subject of entail: by this we learn that, previous to the Revolution, the colonies followed the English law of entail. Estates tail were abolished in Virginia in 1776, on a motion of Mr. Jefferson. They were suppressed in New York in 1786, and have since been abolished in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Missouri. In Vermont, Indiana, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... sense of distinction, she flared up and accused him of treachery to his best friend, Roxbury Medcroft, who was reposing the utmost confidence in his friendship and loyalty. How could she be expected to go on with the play if he, the man upon whom everything depended, was to turn tail in a critical ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... our bliss Full and perfect is, But now begins; for, from this happy day, The Old Dragon, under ground In straighter limits bound, Not half so far casts his usurped sway; And, wroth to see his kingdom fail, Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail. ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... the group. I have said that he was well-to-do, and he was certainly a gentleman in spirit and bearing. The black dress which he assumed on Sundays, and other occasions of public importance, set off his figure well, and his white hair gathered into a pig-tail behind and tied up with a ribbon by some one of his daughters, of a morning, gave him a venerable appearance, at least in the eyes of us youngsters, beyond what the actual number of his years warranted. For I have observed that those who may have seemed to us approaching the verge of old age, ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... his tail wagging slowly, regarded them with wondering, disappointed eyes. He had felt so very proud of his fish and now his family seemed to look ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... but little wind, so that it was not till the 29th of August we found ourselves in latitude 34 deg., where we first, in a clear star-light night, saw the comet which was then visible in the neighbourhood of Aldebaran; it had a tail four degrees and a half long. On the 4th of September we sailed over a point, occupied in Arrowsmith's chart by the island Laxara, without perceiving the smallest trace of it; the existence therefore of this island, which is said to have ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... As for listening, I don't know, but maybe we listen for the sounds that we are so used to hearing at home, the rustle of leaves, the song of a bird, but all we ever hear out here in the daytime is now and then the buzz of a rattler's tail. We don't always shoot 'em because we sort of hate to make so much noise. I reckon that isn't much of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... against a large beam, which acts as a powerful spring, and drives it down on the iron with such velocity that by these means about double the number of strokes can be made in a given time. In the smaller tilt-hammers, this is carried still further by striking the tail of the tilt-hammer forcibly against a small steel anvil, it rebounds with such velocity, that from three to five hundred strokes are made in a minute. In the manufacture of anchors, an art in which a similar contrivance is of still greater importance, ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... ordered our last pistols to be fired off in one volley, and after that we gave a shout; upon this the wolves turned tail, and we sallied immediately upon near twenty lame ones, which we found struggling on the ground, and fell a-cutting them with our swords, which answered our expectation; for the crying and howling they made were better understood by their fellows; so that ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... in a trap, And this little mouse she heard it snap, This little mouse did loudly squeak out, And this little mouse did run all about, This little mouse said, "Do not bewail And let us take hold and pull him out by the tail." ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... They paint their faces black and red, like the other savages which we have seen. They are an agile people, with well-formed bodies. Their weapons are pikes, clubs, bows and arrows, at the end of which some attach the tail of a fish called the signoc, others bones, while the arrows of others are entirely of wood. They till and cultivate the soil, something which we have not hitherto observed. In the place of ploughs, they use ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... their houses for the distant winter. Henry, hidden among the bushes, watched them quite a while, interested in their work, and observing their methods of construction. He could easily have shot two or three, and beaver tail was good to eat, but he had no thought of molesting them, and, after he had seen enough, drew off cautiously, lest he disturb ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... their stead a basket of fruit and flowers on the seat beside her. "Come, Lady, come; just hurry a little." She touched the mare with the whip, a delicate reminder to haste, which Lady assumed to be a fly and treated as such with a switch of her tail. ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... fasten it tightly around the fetlock, between the foot and the heel, and smooth the hair over it. In twenty minutes the horse will show lameness. Do not leave it on over nine hours. To make a horse lame.—Take a single hair from its tail, put it through the eye of a needle, then lift the front leg and press the skin between the outer and middle tendon or cord, and shove the needle through, cut off the hair each side and let down the foot. The horse will go lame in twenty minutes. How to make a horse stand ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... animals; not merely the thoughtfulness that eases a horse from the pain of a badly fitting harness or gives food and drink to an animal that is in need, but also that which keeps a boy from throwing a stone at a cat or tying a tin can on a dog's tail. If a boy scout does not prove his thoughtfulness and friendship for animals, it is quite certain that he never will be really helpful to his comrades or to the men, women, and children who may ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... gold coin, rudely stamped with Arabic characters, called mas or massiah. Its current value is said to be about fifteen, and its intrinsic about twelve pence, or five Madras fanams. Eighty of these are equal to the bangkal, of which twenty make a katti. The tail, here an imaginary valuation, is one-fifth of the bang-kal, and equal to sixteen mas. The small leaden money, called pitis or cash, is likewise struck here for the service of the bazaar; but neither these nor the former afford ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... heaping boxes, barrels and other combustibles upon the flame. It was a bonfire, kindled to light the work of building a barricade at that point. Across the street a line of wagons had been placed; the tail of each one touching the front of another, the horses having been withdrawn. And then hundreds of busy figures were to be seen at work, tearing up the pavements of the street and heaping the materials ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... Dave at last, holding up the nippers. "See? Fox-tail, just's I thought. Got it in ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... the one loaded with ball in his gun. He heard a pattering on the dry leaves under the trees and into a fairly open space before them stalked a pretty little bantam cock with red comb and wattles and curving green tail-feathers, followed by four or five sober brown hens, so like in every respect to domestic fowl that Wargrave hesitated to shoot. But suddenly the birds whirred up into the air; and, as the Colonel gave them both barrels, Frank did ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... themselves to the left, on the road leading from Niagara Falls to the fortress; these were reinforced in the morning with the grenadiers and part of the forty-sixth regiment, commanded by lieutenant-colonel Massey; and another regiment, under lieutenant-colonel Farquhar, was posted at the tail of the works, in order to support the guard of the trenches. About eight in the morning, the enemy being in sight, the Indians in the English army advanced to speak with their countrymen who served under the French ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... on. The bear, seeing the girls ahead of him, and being frightened by their screams, turned tail and took the back trail. By that time Harriet had reached the fire. She snatched up a burning brand. She was upon the bear before it realized its peril. Harriet seeing it so close to her thought the bear was chasing her. She struck out with the burning fagot with all the force ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... if you noticed that man you saw that he ran as soon he saw us. We didn't say a word to him. He just turned tail and sprinted." ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... var flet taylis. Thir var the namis of them as eftir follouis: the taylis of cantirberrye, Robert le dyabil duc of Normandie, the tayl of the volfe of the varldis end, Ferrand erl of Flandris that mareit the deuyl, the taiyl of the reyde eyttyn vitht the thre heydis, the tail quhou perseus sauit andromada fra the cruel monstir, the prophysie of merlyne, the tayl of the giantis that eit quyk men, on fut by fortht as i culd found, vallace, the bruce, ypomedon, the tail of ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... marked by spots or mere lines, usually slender ovals, in which the hair grows down. This tendency of the hair to grow upward is not confined to the udder proper; but extends out upon the thighs and upward to the tail. The edges of this space over which the hair turns up are usually distinctly marked, and, as a rule, the larger the area of this space, which is called the "mirror" or "escutcheon," the more milk the cow will give, and the longer she ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... pilot's compartment, Jack manipulated the controls again. The ship moved away from the asteroid and yawed around so that the "tail" was pointed toward the anchor bolt. Protruding from a special port was a heavy-duty universal joint with special attachments. Harry reached out, grasped it with one hand, and pulled it toward him, guiding it toward the eyebolt. A cable attached to its other end ...
— Thin Edge • Gordon Randall Garrett
... flowers in her hair and wear a tinkling necklace of bright red and blue beads. She had a mangy dog, hairless in places and rheumy at the eyes, who was all her passion, and this creature she would adore, taking it to sleep with her, talking to it by the hour together, pulling its tail and twisting its neck so that it growled with rage—and then, when it growled, she, too, would make strange noises as though ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... for them to go to the church, Johnny had clasped tight in his fat fingers, a little wooden horse, about half as long as Minnie's arm, with only one leg, and a very short stump of a tail. The little fellow had managed to break off the long tail and three legs, but he didn't care, not he! one leg was enough for him; he loved the horse dearly, and sucked his head very often and banged ...
— Baby Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... been found out with no better evidence to start the discovery. The end of a clue is often the almost invisible tail of a piece of string. But we have other ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... slice off ears and to slit noses: there was no rack: nobody was tortured: nobody was branded on the hand: there was no whipping of women in Bridewell as a public show—that came later: there was no flogging at the cart tail. ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... they had come out at his gullet; whereat she took fright and said to him, 'What art thou?' 'O strumpet,' answered he, 'I am the sharper Jewan the Kurd, of the band of Ahmed ed Denef; we are forty sharpers, who will all tilt at thy tail this night, from dusk to dawn.' When she heard his words, she wept and buffeted her face, knowing that Fate had gotten the better of her and that there was nothing for it but to put her trust in God the Most High. So she took patience and submitted herself to the ordinance of ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... to hang on to the tail of other 'gentlemen,' such as Richard Brithwood, forsooth!—a ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... and the pack-camel rose, moved a few paces on its noiseless feet, swaying from side to side as though to readjust its load, whisked its miserable tail, and stretching out its long neck began to nibble the ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... of his language, he even thanked me for speaking well of him; for when the reading was ended he thrust his nose far forward, laid his long ears back upon his neck, planted his little legs firmly, and as he erected in triumph his scrag of a tail, he uttered a most thunderous bray. "And now, Wise One," Pablo said, tenderly, as he infolded the head of the ass in his arms and hugged it to his breast, "thou knowest that we not only love thee for thy ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... decrement, reflux, depreciation; deterioration &c. 659; anticlimax; mitigation &c. (moderation) 174. V. decrease, diminish, lessen; abridge &c. (shorten) 201; shrink &c. (contract) 195; drop off, fall off, tail off; fall away, waste, wear; wane, ebb, decline; descend &c. 306; subside; melt away, die away; retire into the shade, hide its diminished head, fall to a low ebb, run low, languish, decay, crumble. bate, abate, dequantitate|; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... hide. Yet there was no one to be seen. From without the door came no sound. Suddenly something soft touched his foot. He gathered all his will power so as not to break out into a frenzied shriek. Then he laughed, not a hearty laugh, to be sure. A tiny nose and a tail gracefully curled were brushing against him. The source of the disturbance was a little Maltese cat, his favourite, that by some chance had remained in his room. After its essay at midnight gymnastics the animal quieted down and lay purring at the ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... of the adjoining coast, where the beds of ash are finely displayed; consisting of fragments and bombs of basalt, with pieces of chalk, flint, and peperino, which is irregularly bedded. These ash-beds attain a thickness of about 120 feet just below the road to Ballycastle, but rapidly tail out in both directions from the locality of the vent. Just below the ash-beds, the white chalk with flints may be seen extending down into the sea-bed. Nowhere in Antrim is there such a display of volcanic ash and agglomerate as ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... taken on both sides, and in the excitement f or the moment Orris lost all sight of the fate of his partner. At last, in trying by a desperate and perilous maneuver, to "get on the tail" of his adversary by a side-loop in mid-flight, the Boche pilot, while upside down, came for an instant fairly within range. Quickly Orris took ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... Whilst we were still eating and fortifying the window-places as best we could, so as to make them difficult to enter, a single Kaffir appeared, waving above his head a stick to which was tied a white ox-tail as a sign of truce. I ordered that no one should fire, and when the man, who was a bold fellow, had reached the spot where the dead captain lay, called to him, asking his business, for I could speak his ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... gained by riding a goat, any petty crossroads, with its lodge-room over the grocery, would contain a Herbert Spencer; and the agrarian mossbacks would have wisdom by the scruff and detain knowledge with a tail-hold. ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... "soaring-plane" theory of flight. From the picture here given we can get some idea of his curious machine. It consisted of large wings, formed of thin osiers, over which was stretched light fabric. At the back were two horizontal rudders shaped somewhat like the long forked tail of a swallow, and over these was a large steering rudder. The wings were arranged around the glider's body. The whole apparatus weighed ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... many days' mourning for his lost Scotty, is consoling himself, as other men do, with a substitute. Last Friday he Brought home a flop-eared pup with a drooping tail and an indefinite ancestry, explaining that he had come into possession of the aforementioned animal by the duly delivered purchase-price ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... reasonable suspicion of being wild and mischievous anarchists. The opportunities and temptations that come to those in power would be a test of the quality of the sect more severe than trial by the cart-tail and ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... affection; and lord Martin, I have authority to tell you, is her aversion." "Oh, ho! is it so. Well then, sir, I will tell you what I shall do. Your nephew shall never have my daughter, though she had but a rag to her tail. And as for her affections and her aversion, I will lock her up, and keep her upon bread and water, till she knows, that she ought to have neither, before her own father has told her what is what." Mr. Moreland, all of whose nerves were irritated into a fever by so much vulgarity, and ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... of the couple who held Jem Hogg's lines, "Jem seems to be doin' somethin' uncommon queer—he's either got hold of a conger-eel by the tail, or he's amoosin himself by dancin' ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... faithful tail, which was quite hidden under the cloak, and they both trudged on, Dotty's heart quivering with ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... close by the palings; and at the barrier they even walked into the toll-man's potato-field, where his one fowl was strutting about, with a string to its leg, lest it should take fright at the crowd, and stray away, and so be lost. This fowl had short tail-feathers, and winked with both its eyes, and looked very cunning. "Cluck, cluck!" said the fowl. What it thought when it said this I cannot tell you; but directly our good man saw it, he thought, "That's the finest ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... began to wag his tail joyfully, and then, putting his paws on the bed, licked the hand she ...
— Minnie's Pet Dog • Madeline Leslie
... men wear trousers rolled up high and a long white shirt of very thin material, the tail hanging out over the trousers like a sweater. They wear nothing on the feet and most of them wear nothing on the head. They are not fond of clothing, and many wear very little, almost going nude. They find a great deal of pleasure in the possession of a gun and it seems that they are ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... three. It held its position on this church and its successors, one of which was long known as the "Cockerel Church," for one hundred and forty-eight years, when it was raised on the Shepard Memorial Church of Cambridge, where it now is. "It measures five feet four inches from bill to tip of tail, and stands five feet five inches from the foot of the socket to the top of comb, and weighs one hundred ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... right or wrong, that's what sent Gunderson into a tail spin. I wouldn't be surprised but what he's a little hipped on that subject. He'll get 'em one of these days. Even an E can make a mistake, and when one of 'em ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... roaming down a river bed minus his nether garments, and lives to this day in the appellation of Shirt Tail canyon. Two men fought. One of them lost an eye in the manner indicated by Gouge Eye. Hundreds of wild geese were wont to gather on a sunny mesa above the river. It made a splendid level town called Wild Goose Flat. The plains were covered with "Antelope." The end gate of a prairie schooner was ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... (why, Rosy did not know; she thought it a very stupid name), of whom, to tell the truth, Rosy was rather afraid. For Manchon could look very grand and terrible when he reared up his back, and swept about his magnificent tail; and though he had never been known to hurt anybody, and mamma said he was the gentlest of animals, Rosy felt sure that he could do all sorts of things to punish his enemies if he chose. And knowing ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... look his way. She had her coaxing eyes on her halting maid. "Come, Janet, woman," she said again. "It's no job for a decent lass to be wandering at the tail of a ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... explain. It's an old trick, but one seldom tried. This hair came from the tail of a white horse. It was threaded into a long, keen needle. The fellow who got at your horse yesterday was an expert. With one jab of that needle he passed the hair through the flesh just back of this cord. It went in at one side, and came out ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... paw or tail, he did so in affrighted joy, the mewing of the poor creature giving him vague terror, as though he heard a human cry of pain. Laurent, in fact, was afraid of Francois, particularly since the latter passed his time on the knees of the impotent old lady, as ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... such is the meaning officially attached to the word "vivisection," the teacher would be debarred from showing the circulation in a frog's foot or in a tadpole's tail; he must not show an animalcule, uncomfortably fixed under the microscope, nor prick his own finger for the sake of obtaining a drop of living blood. The living particles which float in that liquid undoubtedly feel as ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... and freedom for every tree to respond to the influences of earth and sky according to its law. Exceedingly proper things are not at all in the line of nature. Nature never trims a hedge, or cuts off the tail of a horse. Nature never compels a brook to flow in a right line, but permits it to make just as many turns in a meadow as it pleases. Nature is very careless about the form of her clouds, and masses and colors them with great disregard of the opinions of the painters. Nature never thinks of smoothing ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... only didst give over thine own husband to Satan, but hast likewise tortured me and my poor child almost unto death with pains like those of hell." Before she could make any answer, a loathsome insect, about as long as my finger, and with a yellow tail, crawled in under the door of the prison. When she espied it she gave a yell, such as I never before heard, and never wish to hear again. For once, when I was in Silesia, in my youth, I saw one of the enemy's soldiers spear a child before its mother's face, and ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... four grand provinces of Erin pitched camp and took quarters that night at Belat Aileain ('the Island's Crossway'). Belat Aileain was its name up to then, but Glenn Tail ('Glen of Shedding') is henceforth its name because of the abundance of curds and of milk [5]and of new warm milk[5] which the droves of cattle and the flocks [6]of the land of Conalle and Murthemne[6] yielded there [7]that night[7] for the men of Erin. And Liasa ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... fight him, but in desperation I threw myself upon him, and dug my nails into him. They had fortunately found their way to his eyes. He was the veriest coward of his species. He yelped and howled, and struggling from my grasp ran with his tail merged in his person back to his mistress, who was hobbling after me. But with the renewed strength of triumph I turned again for home, and ran as I had never run before. When or where the dame gave in, I do not know; I never turned my head until I laid it on Kirsty's bosom, and there ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald |
